


I'm fighting in the dark trying not to break your heart

by courtneysk8r



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Slow Burn, and cuddles, but not overly explained, lots of depression, mentions of booker's family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:54:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29972847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courtneysk8r/pseuds/courtneysk8r
Summary: "100 years from today they'll meet you here, until then you're alone". A century is a long time to be alone with your thoughts, particularly when they are as bad as Booker's."Nile was gonna let you off with an apology." Was she the only one who thought that a century of banishment would be a terrible idea for a man with depression?It's Nile's job to take care of the family, and that includes Booker, but maybe she needs him to care for her too.An exploration of Booker's banishment and non-existent mental health with endgame Book of Nile
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. The punishment

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all let me just say that this is the longest thing I've ever written and that I have terrible time management skills. Shout out to my girl Carolyn (supernaturallyshinee on tumblr) for editing this for me; my darling Katie (bluelaceskies) for listening to me talk about this, supporting me, and reading snippets all the time; and of course to Amy my fantastic artist. 
> 
> Title is taken from the song "Take you down" by illenium which is the biggest damn Booker song ever. I listened to a lot of illenium while writing this because there's just so many booker and/or book of nile songs that it's not even funny. Other notable ones include: crashing, in your arms, that's why, and let you go.
> 
> I'm on tumblr at notyouraveragehalfdemon if you want to come chat about Booker and how much I love this sad rat bastard frenchman.

With a small sigh, Booker leaned forward to rest his elbows on the railing looking out of the calm waters of the Thames. The glass of brandy hung loosely from his right hand as he absentmindedly spun his wedding ring around his finger with his thumb. It was a habit he had picked up all those centuries ago, when the feeling of the cool metal band against his skin was still a foreign sensation, now he wasn’t sure if it was a comfort or a tangible reminder of the ice in his chest. It wasn’t the first iteration of his ring, it wasn’t even the second. The first had been lost to the Russian winter, slipping off his emaciated finger after weeks of starvation. He’d had the second commissioned shortly after his unexpected return home, but that one had been lost to a job gone wrong when a bomb had taken his whole hand. Joe had surprised him with this one shortly after and he only brought it out when things were quiet, he knew better now than to take it on a job. It wasn’t identical to the others, instead featuring three gold bands with a clasp in the middle. Booker knew it was supposed to represent his family, on the bad days the three bands were for his sons and the clasp for Isabel, on the good he wondered if maybe it was for the three, well four now, people inside the pub deciding his fate.

With a sigh he switched the glass back to his left hand and pulled it to his lips. Sometimes he hated that his body healed the effects of the alcohol fast enough that it made it difficult to fully numb himself to the world, but other times he didn’t mind, particularly when the alcohol was good and he could savor the taste. He’d had better brandy, he’d also had worse, but it was decent enough that sipping it and savoring the burn down his throat wasn’t an issue. Not to mention, he was sure that some of his family already wanted his head, preferably detached from his body, and getting drunk would probably be the nail in the coffin they would bury him in...while he was still alive. 

He glanced over to his right when he heard movement and wasn’t surprised to see Nile standing there. She of all people had least cause to hate him, but he wouldn’t blame her if she did anyway. “How’s it going?”

“They’re still deciding.” She replied, not turning to face him but rather watching the other three inside the pub. She didn’t feel she had a place in this conversation since she'd only known them for a few days and didn’t share the hundreds of years of history and love between them that the man beside her had tried to throw away with his life.

“There’s not much to decide, it’s not like they can kill me.”  _ Even though I deserve it. Even though I want them to. Hell if anyone could figure out a way to make it stick it would be them.  _ The thoughts rose quickly and he took another drink to keep them from spilling out. When she didn’t say anything further he turned to look at her and saw that her attention was captured by the phone in her hands. “Oh she gave it back?”

“Yeah,” There was a lot in that one word, a lot of pain. Pain at the realization that Andy was right, that Booker was right, that prolonging contact with her family would just make things worse. “Talked to Copley, he said he could fix it, make it look like I was killed in action.” Fix it for her family she meant, not for her, this would never be fixed for her. She’d never get to hug her mother again, or tease her brother. “My family will mourn, but they’ll be able to move on.” She let out a sigh, dropping her head back to look at the clouds dancing across the sky, “It’ll be just like what we did with my dad.” When she was little she had wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps, but not like this, never like this, causing her family the same pain he had. “I just really wanna hear my mom’s voice one more time.”

Booker looked over at her then, seeing the pain in his chest reflected back on her face. This was not what he had planned, everything that he felt, that he wanted, was being reflected back in his family. Joe and Nicky had been tortured instead of him. Andy lost her immortality instead of him. And now Nile, the newest, the one he had tried to keep out of this mess, the one who had thankfully ruined his plans, was facing the same gaping abyss of pain that he had unknowingly trapped himself in. “You’re a good kid Nile, you’re gonna be great for the team.” He hoped she could read in his voice, in his face, his wish that she learn from his mistakes. That she be better than he was and make it so they wouldn’t feel his absence too much. He wasn’t dying, unfortunately, but he knew there was no way they would let him stay. And even if they did take mercy on him, there was no way he could face them after what he had done. He had almost condemned them to a life spent in a box being carved apart, he had almost condemned Andy to death. Nile left him then to go back inside. He gave a sharp sigh before draining his glass to return it to the pub and wandering down to the beach.

He didn’t know how long he stood on that beach throwing pebbles into the water of the Thames before Andy joined him. “There has to be a price.” She started and he nodded slowly for her to continue. She took a moment, and he didn’t have to look at her to know that what she was about to say hurt her. “100 years from today they’ll meet you here, until then you’re alone.”  _ We aren’t meant to be alone _ echoed in her ears and, as she pointedly refused to look at the man beside her, those words rang more true than before.

Alone. The word crashed around his skull with the force of 200 years behind it. Alone. He was alone again. There were plenty of times in the last two centuries that he had felt alone, alone with his pain and his grief. But then Andy was there to smack him out of it, or Nicky with a gentle tug back to reality, or Joe with his easy smile. And now? Now there was nothing. “I hoped for less, but I expected more.” Permanent banishment or worse wouldn’t have been out of the question.

“Nile wanted to let you off with an apology.” 

“Just give her some time.” Give her some time to hate me too, he meant, give her some time to realize that the team is better off without me.

The silence between them felt heavy with the weight of history and words they wouldn’t say when Andy broke it. “I’m gonna miss you.”

That drew his attention to her in a way the rest of their conversation hadn’t. He let her confession stand between them a moment, to give it the time it deserved, before turning and pulling her into a firm hug. He’d never thought that she was fragile until that moment, when he held her in his arms so sure that he could crush her and she wouldn’t recover, when he was faced with the knowledge that his 100 year sentence would see Andy’s mortality come for her the way it came for everyone else he loved. He held her close to him, trying to memorize her for when the day came when he wouldn’t remember her face or the strength of her hands.

She pulled away then, unable to face the emotion in the trembling of his limbs and the caress of his hand on the back of her neck. She could see him searching her face, memorizing the slope of her nose and the curve of her cheek so she wasn’t surprised when “I won’t see you again.” fell almost unbidden from his mouth, as if he couldn’t bear to give name to that thought. 

“Have a little faith Book.” She offered him what she hoped was a reassuring smile before walking off the beach towards the rest of their group. 

Booker watched her go, meeting Joe’s eyes briefly and giving him a little nod before turning back to the Thames.

~6 months later~

Somehow he had ended up in Paris. He knew when he left London that he needed to go somewhere where he could be lost, just one face among a sea of faces. He had an old flat here, little more than a bathroom and a kitchen, that would suit his needs. He couldn’t say for sure how long he’d been here, the days blending together in a slurry of alcohol and eating just enough food to not starve to death. He’d experienced that death before and wasn’t keen on doing it again.

Booker pushed through the front door of the complex, having just returned from a night spent with more alcohol than food until he was blissfully numb for far too short a time before the alcohol wore off again. The half empty bottle of brandy slipped through his fingers and shattered on the floor. He kicked the broken glass, not that it did much to repair the bottle, and slumped down onto the bottom stair, dropping his head in his hands while swearing softly under his breath. He sighed once, running his fingers through his hair with minor disgust When was the last time he had washed it? When was the last time he’d showered? He pushed shakily to his feet, fishing his key out from his pants to unlock the door. 

The door to his flat opened with barely a push and instantly all the alcohol flushed from his system on a wave of adrenaline. Instinct took over and his gun was in his hands almost before he had decided to pull it. A woman stood in his flat, a woman whose face tickled something in his memory but it was lost to the tides of brandy ebbing through his mind. 

“Booker.” She murmured, an accent of the old world and the roughness of saltwater coloring her voice as she poured herself a glass of water from a jug he didn’t know he owned. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Quynh.” Recognition hit him...well it hit him like the butt of the gun that Qunyh’s goon smacked into the back of his head before everything went dark.


	2. The rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We dream of each other, they stop when we meet." Nile dreams of Quynh, but she's not where Nile expects her to be.

When Nile felt the vice grip of an immortal dream sink into her subconscious, she prepared herself for the crushing cold and pressure of the bottom of the English channel. The dreams didn’t come every night, but she’d dealt with them enough to know what it felt like to be sucked down into the depths and suffer what Quynh suffered even for a few minutes. This time, this time though things were different. 

Nile found herself looking at the inside of a dirty flat with the faint glittering skyline of Paris appearing out the window. She heard a door open, a gun being pulled, and was faced with the man who they had banished just over 6 months ago. She saw Quynh, free of the coffin, lifting a glass to her lips.

Nile woke with a gasp when Booker slumped to the floor, unconscious. Her startled sound woke Nicky, which in turn woke Joe. The boys looked at her in confusion, but she held up one hand for them to wait, eyes closed as she replayed the dream in her head looking for any and all clues she could get.

“What’s going on?” Andy asked, looking between the three immortals. Joe and Nicky shrugged in confusion, gesturing to Nile who had grabbed a notebook and was frantically writing down everything she could remember. “Nile?” Andy asked again, softer this time as she watched the newest member of their family. 

“It’s Quynh.” Nile explained, watching Andy freeze the way she always did when her love was mentioned. “She’s free, and she has Booker.”

“What exactly did you see, Nile?” Nicky asked, coming to attention, always the sniper alert and ready to act. 

“A dirty flat, somewhere in Paris. I think…” She rubbed her hands across her face as she tried to make sense of the scrambled images flashing through her mind, “I think it’s where Booker’s been staying. Quynh was there, probably broke in, it looked like she surprised him. She had someone else with her, I couldn’t see who it was, but they knocked Booker out. I woke up after that.”

All was quiet for a long moment as the others processed what Nile had told them. “What now?” She asked.

“We wait.” Andy replied. At Nile’s concerned look she continued, “We don’t know how she escaped, who she’s working with, or where they took him. We can ask Copley to try and find them, but until we know more he’s on his own.”

~4 days later~

The crack of his lower jaw snapping back in place was loud in the dingy room he’d been locked in for he didn’t even know how long at this point. The motion reopened the cut on his upper lip that hadn’t healed yet as his body could only repair so much damage at once and had to prioritize and he spat out the blood and a tooth onto the floor. Booker swayed a little from the effort, he knew better than most the weakness and delirium of starvation and Quynh wasn’t exactly pampering him, before giving her goon the biggest shit eating grin he could muster. He didn’t have to say anything this time before he was hit again, the blow knocking him backwards onto the cold floor.

“That’s enough. He wants you to knock him out, let’s not give him what he wants.” Quynh’s voice was as cold as the water she had surfaced from as she watched Booker struggle to catch a breath not flavored with his own blood. She glided over to him, all fluidity and serpentine grace as she crossed the floor and knelt down to grab his jaw roughly in her hands. One of his eyes was trying to swell and heal but he could see the emptiness in her expression, as if all her emotions were locked behind iron. “It doesn’t do us any good to hurt him if that’s what he wants. He needs to know, he needs to feel it in his bones, that no one is coming for him.”

That got a laugh out of him, “You’re right.” he barked, meeting her gaze defiantly.

Her thin brows knitted together in confusion, “It is amusing to you? That you’ve been discarded? Abandoned?”

“Not at all.” He sat back on his heels, breaking from her grip in her confusion. “What’s amusing is that you think it bothers me, that I’m going to rage.”

“They left you!” There it was, the fire he had heard about breaking free from the cold and steel, “They left you just like they left me! You should be angry at them! You should hate them as I do!”

“The difference between you and me Quynh, is that unlike you I deserved this.” His voice dropped, holding a hint of sympathy that surprised them both, “Do you really think Andy would just leave anyone behind after losing you unless they were completely irredeemable?” He scoffed, licking the blood off his teeth, “You picked the wrong hostage. No one is coming for me because I betrayed them. I sold them out to try and end it, so please continue, you’d just be doing me a favor.” There were too many teeth in the expression he offered her to be called a grin and she took it for the challenge it was, kicking him in the head and putting him out before he could say another word. 

He came to a couple hours later, but nearly blacked out again when he tried to sit up. “Here, eat.” The clatter of metal sliding across stone reached his ears before her words and he blinked a few times to get his vision to focus on the simple fried rice dish and water that were sitting in front of him. He eyed her warily. He may have had a death wish but it was more of a quick and merciful death he was after, not a slow poisoning. “I’m not trying to poison you.” Quynh scoffed, taking a quick bite of the rice and making a point of swallowing it, “There, see.” 

Booker grabbed the bowl and devoured it eagerly, “This is good, what’s in it?” He asked, looking up at her briefly before going back to the meal. 

“I don’t know, I bought it.” She replied with a shrug. 

_ Well that was a bust _ . He thought, not that the information would have done him much good. He had been hoping that the ingredients would give him some idea about where they were, but he had a feeling that he wasn’t getting out of here unless Quynh let him. “So what’s the plan Quynh?” He asked finally.

“What do you mean Sebastien?”

He winced as he always did at the use of his given name, that man was long gone and the name had been buried with Jean-Pierre. “You have me as a hostage. Are you going to try and convince me to turn on the others more than I already did? Are you going to wait for them to come rescue me even though we’ve already established that that isn’t happening? If they do come, what is your plan? Have you thought this through at all?”

“I want them to suffer.” Quynh started pacing around the small room as if the added movement would shake loose further thoughts.

“That’s nice. How do you plan to do that?” 

“I want them to suffer as I have suffered, obviously.” She stated as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

Booker was quiet for a moment, giving his words more weight than usual. He wasn’t Nicky to spout philosophical words of wisdom every time he opened his mouth, nor was he Joe who spoke poetry with every word. He was decidedly less impressive, the screwup, a drunk, someone who spoke self-deprecating cries for help that played off as jokes and went largely ignored. But he couldn’t afford to mess this up, walking the line between giving her ideas she did not need and getting enough information to warn the others about what was coming...assuming they would listen to anything he said. “All of them?” He asked finally.

“Yes, of course all of them.” Quynh scoffed before pausing, face scrunching up in thought. “Wait...but if I separate them...if I condemn Nicky to my fate and let Joe suffer as Andy suffered…”

This, this had been what he was hoping for, a moment of confusion and indecision on her part that he could take advantage of. “So Andy suffered too? I thought you wanted to punish her.” 

“I...I don’t know…” Quynh seemed to shrink, her voice and body language getting smaller as she started to war with herself. There were parts of her that were angry with everyone, parts that knew she had been abandoned by the one person that was supposed to be there forever. But her heart, oh her heart ached for her Andromache. Ached to see her again, ached to hold her again, ached to ease the suffering she had seen in the 200 plus years she’d watched Andy through Booker’s eyes in her dreams.

“And how were you getting access to them to enact your revenge since they aren’t coming for me?”

“I don’t know!” She screamed before turning all her anger and frustration outward on the most obvious target, which was him. He knew he didn’t stand a chance against her rage, not when he was chained to the floor, and death was more of a blessing than a curse in her care. Blood sprayed, bones cracked, the knife that Quynh pulled from her pocket sang as it sank over and over into Booker’s chest, and he once again slipped into the blissful peace of temporary death.

~~

“What’ve you got Copley?” Andy asked almost before their new techie answered the call. 

“Not much yet.” He replied, setting up the screen share to show the team what he had found. “I tracked the car they used to a regional airport where they got a charter flight. The flight manifest had them landing in Singapore. I’m working on tracing them through Singapore but it’s going to take more time. However she got free, whoever she’s working with, they’ve got a lot of money.”

“Find them Copley, please.”

~~~~

“I have a surprise for you Sebastien.” Quynh greeted, walking into Booker’s cell with a bottle of water in hand. She took a long sip, enjoying the way he swallowed and licked his parched lips. 

“And what would that be Quynh?” He asked with a huff, trying to blow a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. She had chained his hands in front of him and connected that chain to the floor, he could reach high enough to eat when she remembered to bring him food, but any higher was difficult without bending so far over that he thought he wouldn’t get up again.

“I had another dream of the new one, what’s her name again? Nile?” Quynh’s smile only grew at the way he stiffened, every muscle going tense to prepare for a fight. “It seems you were wrong, they are searching for you after all. I tried not to make things too easy, but I want them to find us you see. Andromache is too cautious for me to get close to them, but coming to rescue you? That she could not resist. Because you’re right, she wouldn’t just leave anyone after having lost me. I saw through you the guilt she carried, and that guilt will be her undoing.” With each word she leaned closer until she was right in his face. “I want you to know that they will suffer, and it will be because of you.” 

Quynh quickly jumped back out of his reach with a laugh as he lunged for her, straining against his chains to reach her. She capped the bottle of water and threw it on the floor in front of him, “Don’t want you dying again before they come to save you.” She remarked, leaving the room and locking the door behind her.

~~~~

Exactly 2 weeks after Nile first had the dream of Quynh abducting Booker they were on a plane to Singapore. Two weeks of anxiety, waiting for Copley to find them or for more information from the sporadic dreams of Quynh, dreams that just gave her more anxiety as she witnessed the level of hospitality that Quynh was offering their Frenchman. It was only made harder by the reactions of the rest of the gang. It was still too soon. Even though the physical wounds had healed, even Andy’s gun shot, the mental and emotional wounds were still raw. She could tell that they were worried about Booker; no matter what he did he was still family, but rescuing him would involve seeing him...and no one but her was ready for that. And she had no idea how they felt about Quynh, the actions of the woman who had emerged from the sea didn’t match with the woman they lost to the water. 

“I’m taking point on this one.” Nile declared. Andy looked like she was about to argue and Nile quickly continued, “Don’t even start with the ‘I go first’ thing Andy, you don’t go first anymore and especially not on this mission. Of the four of us, I’m the only one who has any idea about what we’re walking into. Not to mention that we’re probably going to see Booker, who none of you are ready to see. Plus Quynh, who is definitely not the woman you remember. None of you are going to be objective about this and that could be the difference between this going well and this going badly.”

The silence sat heavy between them for a long moment before Nicky spoke up, “She’s right Andromache.” He met Andy’s level glare unflinching. “Based on what Nile has told us, this is not our Quynh. She is a stranger wearing our sister’s face. I don’t think I could take the shot and that could mean your death. Nile is the only one without that history, we need to trust her judgement in this.”

“The priority is rescuing Booker, we deal with Quynh if necessary.” Nile instructed, holding each of their gazes until they acknowledged that it was her call and they needed to listen. “No matter what you may think of him, he doesn’t deserve this.”

~~~

“Ma’am?”

Both Booker and Quynh looked over at the head goon as he entered the dingy room where Quynh had been alternating between beating Booker and taunting him for the better part of an hour. He crossed the room to hand her a tablet showing the security feed for the building they were in. Booker couldn’t see what was on the screen from his position slumped over on the floor cradling his healing broken ribs, but he could see the myriad emotions flashing across Quynh’s face with the speed of a striking cobra. “Andromache.” She breathed reverently as she stroked the tablet screen.

It wouldn’t be until later, when his scrambled and starved brain was back up to full capacity, that Booker would be able to put the sequence of events in the correct order. The odd look on the goon’s face, the sound of the tablet skittering across the floor as Quynh’s arms were yanked back and it flew from her hands, her small noise of confusion, the snicking of the zip ties...and didn’t that sound just echo through his ears, bouncing off a similar noise of confusion in his memory until Quynh’s face blended with Andy’s in his mind’s eye. And when Quynh exclaimed “What are you doing?” he very nearly threw up what little food was still in his system from the last time she had remembered to feed him. 

Booker had made up his mind even before the goon responded. “Kozak was clear, she wants all of you,” he remarked, turning his back on the two immortals to head out and lock the door behind him when Booker lunged. His movement was limited by the chain attaching his hands to the floor, but he was able to grab onto the goon’s legs and yank him to the ground. The man’s head hit the stone floor with a sickening crunch and Booker tugged the limp body forward until he could snap the man’s neck, ensuring that he would either join them or stay dead.

He turned to Quynh then, who was still frozen somewhere between confusion and shock with her hands tied behind her back. “I don’t understand.” She murmured, voice soft and fragile in a way he didn’t think was possible, but they didn’t have time for this.

“Quynh we need to go.” He said, voice brusque with no room for argument without being overly cruel. He didn’t bother asking her for the key to his chains, he just grabbed the gun off the body in front of him and shot the bolt keeping him attached to the floor. The noise seemed to startle her out of her own head more than his voice and she finally turned to look at him, armed and standing free under his own power in a way he hadn’t in weeks. He let out a soft sigh before grabbing the knife off the body and cutting through Quynh’s zip ties. Blood slithered down her fingers from fresh yet healing cuts as he handed her the knife and offered her a hand to help her up.

“You’re helping me? After everything I’ve done to you?”

“Kozak is the doctor.” He explained, seeing the comprehension dawn on her that she had been working for the woman who had experimented on the others, “I trusted them once. I won’t make that mistake again.” He grabbed a second knife, before letting out a small huff of annoyance and carving a line down his palm. He swiped two fingers across the wound as the blood welled up, coating his fingers even as the cut closed up under his touch and turned to the back wall of the room. Writing in his own blood, he scrawled Kozak on the wall. He could feel Quynh’s questioning look drilling a hole in the back of his head, as if she could decipher his reasoning by sticking a finger in his brain. “I’m making sure they know exactly what they are walking into since we won’t be around to explain.” 

“We?”

“Let’s go.”

~~~

Nile, Andy, Joe, and Nicky swept through the compound with practiced precision, keeping Andy between two of them at all times to protect her. It wasn’t long before they came upon a room with a lock on the outside. Silently, they prepared for the worst, Joe opening the door for Nile to clear the room. “Clear.” Nile called behind her, “He’s not here.” The others filed in behind her, taking in the bloody zip tie, the bolt in the middle of the floor, and the body in the room. “What do you think happened?” She asked.

It was Nicky who gestured to the blood on the wall, “Betrayal.” The word was sharp and held notes of pain.

“I guess now we know who was funding this.” Joe replied, crossing the distance to take Nicky’s hand in his briefly, the need for comfort outweighing the need to be on guard. 

Nile was about to respond when the rumble of an explosion cut her off. Instantly everyone was armed again and Joe had crossed the room to shield Andy almost before the dust had finished settling. Nile quickly opened the door, rushing out into the chaos to see two figures retreating on the other side of the flames that had engulfed the hallway between them and the back of the compound. The taller of the two, Booker she realized quickly, met her gaze briefly. She thought she might have seen the barest hint of a smile but it was gone before she could determine if it was real or a trick of the dancing flames. The other figure turned and Nile saw the face from her dreams. Quynh looked longingly at the door behind Nile, as if she knew that’s where the rest of the team was, before Booker grabbed her hand and they ran out. “Time to go.” Nile called in to the other three and the team made their way out of the compound. 

“What about…” Joe started before Nile cut him off.

“They’ll be fine. Andy won’t.”

At that Joe nodded in agreement, Andy was the priority. 

~~~

“Where are we going?” Quynh asked him after they were several miles away from the compound in a stolen car.

He glanced over at her briefly, one eyebrow arched in confusion, “We?”

“I thought…” She trailed off, rubbing her wrists briefly, the memory of the zip ties burning in her skin and igniting other, worse memories of capture. “You said we when we left.”

“I didn’t mean permanently.”

“Please.” Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear it.

“Why? Why would you want to stay with me?”

“So much has changed in the world. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”

“You sure as shit can’t trust me.”

“You’ve been the only constant for almost half of this insanity. And at least you are honest about the fact that I can’t trust you."

Booker was quiet for a long moment before giving her a small half nod, “Alright.”  _ Maybe this won’t be such a bad thing, at the very least I won’t be alone. _


	3. Life with Quynh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Quynh and Booker want to rejoin their family, but they can't for one reason or another. At least they have each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you aren't reading a mausoleum fit for me you definitely should be. I might have taken a few notes from that in this chapter.

When the ringing started, it blended into the voices in his memory yelling at him in a language almost as dead as the ghosts that haunted him. Eventually though it stood out amongst the words that were festering in what remained of his soul and he woke with a start, groping around on the floor next to the mattress to find his phone. 

“ _ Who is it _ ?” He asked.

“Ummmm...Booker?” 

“ _ What do you want Nile _ ?”

“I have no idea what you’re saying Book. Can you please speak a language I understand?”

“Huh?” He blinked a few times, rubbing his hand tiredly over his face. “ _ Are you speaking English _ ?” He wasn’t sure what language he was speaking, but given the words still burning in his ears and the taste of the Mediterranean sea on his tongue he figured he had lapsed into his first language.

“Yeah all I got out of that was English, which would be preferable to whatever you’re speaking now.” He could tell she was getting a little annoyed with him, but what did she expect calling him at 3 am?

“What do you want, Nile?” He asked finally, hoping in his sleep addled state that he got the language right.

“Oh, right. I just wanted to tell you that we found your message.”  _ Message? _ “About the doctor.”  _ Oh that. _ He flexed his hand, staring at his unmarked palm no sign left of the gash he had carved to warn them. “Copley found her, we took care of it. We don’t have to worry about her anymore.”

“Okay.”

“Are you okay?” She asked, rushing the words out as if worried he would hang up on her before she could ask.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I saw you leave with Quynh and I…”

He cut her off with a small self-deprecating laugh, “I’ll survive Nile.”

“That’s not saying much, Book.” She sounded annoyed with him again, eh he probably deserved it. “I saw what she was doing to you.” 

“Whatever you saw I deserved.”

“No you didn’t Booker.”

The sympathy in her voice hurt and he scoffed. “You’re still too young, you don’t understand anything.” He regretted it almost as soon as the words came out of his mouth, but he didn’t know how to deal with the kindness she was offering him. If it wasn’t for her steady breaths on the other side of the line, he would have thought she had hung up on him.

“You can lash out at me if you want Sebastien, if it’ll make you feel better.” The guilt gripping his throat tightened to a vice and he struggled to catch his breath. “But you won’t drive me off. It’s my job to take care of this family. And that includes you.” Her voice had lowered enough on those last few words that he couldn’t tell if it was a threat or a promise. “You call me if you need me.” That was definitely a threat, the unsaid ‘or else’ hanging between them with the click of the call ending as she hung up before he could say something else that would make her want to come through the phone and throttle him. 

~~~~

The first few months were rough. If he was being honest, that was probably the most times he’d died in a period of time in his whole existence. Some of them were accidental. He was very grateful that this safehouse of his in Eastern Asia was so isolated from society, because the incident with the grenade would have drawn a lot of attention otherwise. He didn’t blame her for not knowing what it was, but he was really getting tired of getting blown up. Other deaths were not so accidental. A smart man would have learned after the first two times that waking Quynh up from a nightmare would have lethal consequences. But he’d lived in her head too much in his own dreams to not wake her up when she started gasping for air and clawing for escape.

Nile called him maybe once a month, but never went more than two months between calls. She kept him updated on how things were going, on Andy’s extreme stubbornness and reluctance to wear body armor, and on the antics of Joe and Nicky. She told him about the jobs they took, the people they helped, as if she thought he needed the reminder that there were good things to come from their immortality. He did, even if he couldn’t admit it. After regaling her with yet another instance of Quynh killing him over a bad dream she went quiet for long enough that he thought the call had dropped. “Maybe you should talk to her about it.” 

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t need the reminder.” 

“I’m talking about therapy Book.”

“Not sure I’m qualified for that Nile.”

“You might be the only one who is. Just try it.”

He was about to reply when the click of the call hanging up interrupted him. He hated how she would do that just to get the last word so he couldn’t argue with her, especially when he knew she was right. 

The next time Quynh had a nightmare of her imprisonment, instead of going to wake her up immediately he made tea. He set the mug on the table next to her and gently called her name from across the room to wake her. Like always she awoke in a confused fury, ready to lash out at whoever was there, but he kept far enough away that he was able to talk her down before she cut his throat. When she had finally settled, he picked up his own mug of tea and gestured to the one beside her. “I’ve found it helps,” He explained before she could ask, “Having a warm drink to chase away the cold. It would sometimes take me a bit to be able to drink it, but even just holding the mug helped.”

He watched her grab the mug with unsteady hands and let the warmth seep into her bones until she took a deep breath, the first since he woke her up. “I had forgotten…” She trailed off and he let the silence rest between them, worried that if he spoke she’d never find the words she clearly needed to say. “I had forgotten you had experience with this.”

“Just the dreams. Although I never did find anything better to deal with the pressure in my chest except time.”

“Did the others know?”

“They knew at the beginning. After a while I let them think that the dreams dulled with time. It’d been so long since they had had the dreams for more than a couple years that they had forgotten that wasn’t the case.”

“Why?” He could hear the temperature in her voice rising as his words fueled the rage that was always simmering just below the surface these days.

“Plenty of reasons.” He sighed, taking a drink of tea and grimacing when he realized he’d been so wrapped up in caring for her that he’d forgotten to spike it, and leaving the room now wasn’t an option. “I stopped bringing it up because I hated the look of pain on Andy’s face every time I brought it up. I stopped because I already couldn’t handle their pity, and if they knew what I saw every time I closed my eyes they would just pity me more. I stopped because there was nothing we could do for you. If I had seen something that would have helped find you I would have said something in a heartbeat. But all I saw was endless. Endless darkness, water, pain, and cold. And it wasn’t worth it, to inflict that pain upon them if there was nothing to be done to stop it.” She seemed to accept that explanation because she let the conversation go without further bodily harm. 

Things seemed to stagnate for a bit until one day Quynh cornered him in what passed for the living room in the house they were staying in. She probably didn’t intend for the motion to be predatory but every sudden move she made carried a hint of violence. “Tell me about your life.” She demanded without warning. “The mortal part, I mean.”

“Quynh.” He started in protest before she cut him off.

“It’s the only part of your life I haven’t seen.”

“If you really want to know, I’m sure I could recommend a few books to you.” He grumbled, eyeing her warily as she enclosed on his space.

“I would rather hear it from someone who lived it.” She replied with a slight pout, “Please?”

Booker sighed, standing up to go past her and make himself a cup of coffee. He was quiet while it brewed and dumped in a generous helping from the flask at his hip before turning around to face her. “Alright, story time it is.” He settled himself into the old chair in the room, giving his shoulders a little shake as he settled in, Quynh sitting across from him with a look of rapt attention.

With another drink of his coffee, he started into his story, weaving a tale of royalty and revolution and men mad with power. After all, he was a forger by trade and at the core of a forger is the heart of a writer, of an artist. Someone with immense respect and passion for the power of language and beauty, so much respect that they delved deeply into the craft of how others wove words and color into creation until they could copy that themselves. And being a father to three impetuous boys had refined his ability to tell a story until he could captivate even the most rambunctious listener with just a few words.

And so he went, dropping into an accent that hadn’t passed his lips in centuries as he told her of revolution. Of how they had helped a new country defeat a much larger enemy and how that victory helped an already disgruntled people realize that they could do the same. He told her how he moved to Paris from the south of France, shedding pieces of himself to survive, burying the language of his birth, the accent that colored his French, and even changing his name until he could pass as Parisian as the best of them. 

He had been a young man during the revolution, when food was scarce and loyalty was scacer. When supporting royalty was a one way ticket to the guillotine, the newest invention of murder that was used so frequently he sometimes thought he could still hear the blade cutting through the air...and more. Even all these centuries later, he couldn’t stop the vicious smile from twisting his lips as he talked about watching Robespierre, a man who had sentenced so many to their fates, meet his own. 

It was then that he faltered. It had been so long since Booker had told a story that he had forgotten what the next part of this one entailed. Isabel. Isabel and their boys. The words lodged and died in his throat and he couldn’t figure out if it was words or air he was gasping for. Finally he managed to choke out her name. “Isabel.” The tightening in his gut felt like extreme hunger and he hoped it would kill him and that the pain would stop when Quynh spoke up for the first time.

“She was lovely."

Her voice was a lifeline, he had forgotten she would have seen his Isabel in her dreams. The pressure eased a bit, enough for him to speak again. “In my heart I know she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but I can’t remember what she looked like anymore.” He cleared his throat and gave his head a sharp shake to rattle the marbles back into place to finish his tale. 

The weight in his heart felt like it was pulling his body down into the floor as he told her, somewhat sheepishly, of their quick wedding and subsequent birth of their eldest son. He had never regretted it except that he didn’t have time to give her the lavish affair she deserved. Not that they could have afforded it anyway, jobs were hard to come by and he was lucky to have one but feeding two mouths, soon to be three, still took most of his income. 

That was when things changed, when he met the man who would ruin his life...well ruin his life the first time, Booker knew there was no one to blame this time except himself. It wasn’t important to the story yet, to paint Napoléon as a villain, but he couldn’t stop himself from spitting the name with such vehemence that Quynh recoiled slightly. He didn’t trust the young general from the start, and being known as a forger to a man with that kind of lust for power was a disaster waiting to happen but there was nothing he could have done about that introduction.

The next few years had been filled with such dichotomy that he had constantly felt like he was on a tightrope, one wrong step and everything and everyone he loved would tumble into the abyss. The city he had fallen in love in, and with, was recovering under the banner of a man who professed to hate the royals and yet was determined to be one. His house was full of such love and laughter but each new voice was another mouth to feed on a very limited income. 

And then that income was gone. With the lives of his wife and children on the line, he turned to the answer he knew would be a death sentence for him if he was caught, but might let his family live long enough to find a better solution. Letters, official documents, currency: anything that involved ink to paper he was able to recreate with near perfect accuracy. Even coins crossed his table, the craft of metalwork coming nearly as easily. Art forgery he didn’t pick up until later, for who had use for art when money had the greater value. And when they came for him he didn’t fight, he waited, biding his time until he could find the right moment. He didn’t find it. All he found was a trip to the gallows for desertion when dying in the snow was preferable to the death that waited in front of him and behind him. A trip to the gallows that earned him multiple deaths over three days as he waited for the army to move on, too caught up in surviving this to even think about what his survival meant.

“Things would have been so much better for my family if I never came back.” He muttered at the end, taking a long sip of his drink and staring down into the glass as if the swirling liquid held the answers he sought.

“They got more time with you. That’s no small thing.” Quynh knew his comment wasn’t intended to receive a response, but she couldn’t help herself. She had seen the rest of his story, the good and the bad.

“They died hating me.” He spat, looking up to glare at her for even suggesting as such. 

“How do you know they wouldn’t have hated you for never coming back?” It was harsh, but it was the truth and he needed to hear it. “How do you know they wouldn’t have scorned your name for dying a coward instead of finding glory and redemption in a death on the battlefield for the good of the country?” That earned a derisive scoff from him so she continued, “There’s no sense in carving yourself up over what might have happened or in picking at your scabs until they bleed again. You are not the only one with tragedy Sebastien, there’s no need to suffer alone.”

They reached a truce after that, settling into a rhythm that included lessons for both of them. Lessons on what had happened in the centuries she’d been gone for Quynh and lessons on why the old ways were better for Booker. They swapped stories, old antics of Andy, Joe and Nicky, and even Lykon would light up Quynh and would almost make Booker smile and then Quynh would turn around and ask an explanation of something she had seen in her dreams and Booker would retreat into memories that didn’t hurt to give her some insight on what she had missed in their family. And things were good, until about 6 months later when Quynh decided she had spent too much time apart from her Andromache that she couldn’t afford to miss any more of Andy’s limited time. So he called Nile for the first time, to ask for her help in getting Quynh back home. He plastered on the smallest fake smile he could muster and handed their wayward viper off to Nile. Her sharp gaze pierced all the way through his fragile walls and into the depths of the chasm in his soul and he turned away before she could see more than he wanted her to. “See you in 99 years,” he remarked gruffly, taking her trick and ending the conversation by walking away before she could respond.


	4. Watch me run away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Booker solution to dealing with issues...don't.

In Nepal he died in a rock slide. In the Philippines he drowned. In Peru he ate some flowers off the apple-of-peru and died of nightshade poisoning. In Kenya he was caught by a crocodile. In Norway he froze. None of these deaths, or any of the others he gasped back from, were completely intentional. He didn’t go seeking out the crocodile to put his leg in its mouth to see what would happen, but it would be fair to say he didn’t try his hardest to survive. He never stayed in one place for more than a couple months, bouncing between safe houses, cheap hotels, and even cheaper hostels as he tried to run away from the ghosts stalking him through time. Whatever money he saved on accommodations he blew on alcohol. And when Nile called, asking about the weather in Panama City or how authentic the French food was in New Orleans, he ran again. 

Out of all the things he was running from, she scared him the most. The gnawing pain of grief that crawled out of his chest to devour him whole wasn’t new. It was overwhelming and coated the world in a haze of gray that made it difficult to find the light, but it wasn’t new. He had been drowning in it for centuries now. But Nile, Nile was so new and bright and she seemed determined to drag him unwillingly out of the depths of despair when he would have been happier to be lost to it and that terrified him. Her concern sat so rough on his tattered heart that it burned. Isabel’s concern had been so soft, the gentle touch of cloth to a wound, brushing so lightly across it so as not to cause more pain. And Andy, Andy’s concern was sharp, a stab to the leg to distract from the pain of a regrowing arm and it was so different from what he was used to that kept his thoughts rooted firmly to the present. Nile’s concern felt like a fire to him, sometimes it was just enough warmth to thaw the ice in his veins and other times it lashed out until he was forced to acknowledge that the pain was his fault for sticking his hand into the flames. It felt like the past and the present so mixed up together that it could only be the future. A future where either the blizzard that had claimed him claimed her as well or it surrendered as thoroughly as the bastard who had left him there. One was unacceptable, the other would be a change so big he didn’t know that he’d survive it. 

He ran for 6 years, barely existing and uprooting himself every time Nile called him. He was in Auckland when his phone rang again. He swore he could feel the noose again, growing tighter and tighter with each ring. Finally, when he thought he would black out again from lack of air, he answered, but the voice wasn’t the one he was expecting.

“Sebastien.” Quynh greeted, her voice slithering across the line. “Did I do this right? Are you actually there?”

“I’m here.” He croaked finally, coughing to clear the tickle of feathers from the back of his throat and chasing away the memory with his flask.

“What’s wrong with you this time?” She demanded. 

“I wasn’t…” Booker coughed again to clear his throat before answering, “I just wasn’t expecting to hear your voice.”

“And why would that make you sound so horrible Sebastien?”

“Why did you call me Quynh?” He asked, pointedly ignoring her question.

“I see, you were expecting Nile.”

“Quynh, what do you want?”

“To chat, so it was the idea of talking to Nile that freaked you out. Why is that?”

“I wasn’t freaked out about talking to Nile.” That was a lie if he ever heard one, and he had told plenty in his centuries too long existence.

“Oh, I see. Interesting. I suppose it makes sense after all and being around us so long I’m sure you wondered.” She carried on, talking over any meager interjection he might have tried to make before striking with the last thing he expected her to ask, “How long have you been in love with her?”

Booker froze, every muscle going still as stone. He stopped moving, stopped talking, stopped breathing, he was pretty sure his heart stopped beating. The voice on the other end stopped too, of course the one question she actually wanted an answer to was one that shut him down. 

“Sebastien?” 

Her voice broke the trance, ratcheting up his system straight to fight or flight so quickly he thought he was going to have a heart attack. Without another word he hung up on Quynh, smashing the phone beneath his heel before he could think better of it. The high pitched jittery feeling in his veins continued to stampede through his body until his breath was as uneven and shaky as the rest of him. His knees gave way and he slid to the floor with a grace of a baby deer. “ _ Merde _ .” He gasped out as black spots started to gallop across his vision from hyperventilating.  _ Heart attack would have been faster _ was the last thought to cross his mind before he mercifully passed out.

When he came to, he was still on the floor, the crushed pieces of his phone scattered around him. He tiredly rubbed the heel of his hand across his face before digging through the debris to find the sim card. In the silence of his crappy safehouse, his thoughts drifted briefly to the question Quynh had asked him that had set him off but the panic started to creep back in as if summoned and he quickly shut that train of thought down with a long drink from his flask, grimacing when the whiskey ran out faster than he wanted. He let out a frustrated sigh before shakily making his way to his feet and going to buy a new phone.

It took him another 2 years of running, hesitantly answering the phone each time it rang, fully prepared to run or hang up depending on who was on the other end of the line, before he’d had enough. The world was only so big, there were only so many places he could hunker down and avoid everyone and everything. It didn’t help that Quynh had a tongue as quick and sharp as any of her knives.

“I would have thought after all this time you would be tired of running from your problems but I guess it’s what you’re used to.” She had told him during their last conversation. “Maybe if you actually made an effort to be a person instead of an...what is that large beast that sticks its head in the sand? It has wings but doesn’t fly and is too large to have wings but it does anyway and it hides its head to avoid dealing with problems? Anyway, one of those. You are acting like one of those. If you acted like a person instead of one of those, maybe you wouldn’t break the call at the mention of our little river. I know why you do, you do not think you are worthy of even having such affections for her and the more you run the more you prove yourself right. But really, you are just a coward and you always have been. The nice thing about immortality is you get the chance to grow and recover from trauma. Or you could let it destroy you for the rest of forever. Your choice.”


	5. Crashing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected guest makes things even more confusing for poor Booker

He’d let Quynh's words fester and ferment for almost three months before he realized she was right. And if anyone was allowed to verbally kick his ass about not wallowing in trauma, he supposed it was her. With a resigned sigh he packed his things and went to Montreal, getting himself a job as an art history professor at the university of Montreal and settling into a small apartment near the university. 

And that’s where he was four years later when a knock on the door late at night caught his attention. Very few people knew he lived here, and even fewer would disturb him at this hour. The gun he usually kept down the front of his pants was in his hands before he took a step towards the door.

“Booker?” The knock sounded again this time, slightly more frantic, accompanied by a voice he knew and he crossed the room to open the door, only to have it shut again immediately by Nile after she barreled through, slamming her back against the door with a wide eyed look as she struggled to slow her breathing and her racing heart.

He immediately ushered her to a chair and busied himself making her a cup of tea while she calmed down, and by the time he was finished she seemed to have settled herself enough to talk. “What’s going on?” He asked, placing the tea in front of her, but keeping an eye on the door just in case.

“Job gone wrong.” She panted. Okay maybe not as settled as he thought. “Got separated from the others and couldn’t make it back to the rendezvous. Copley told me you were nearby and gave me your address. Can I hide out here for a bit?”

“Always.” The promise was out there before he had the chance to think about it. “You’ll be safe here. But contact the others, let them know where you are so they don’t worry.” He left her alone then to go and find the other set of sheets and towels to get things comfortable for her. It had been centuries since he’d actually had a guest, but some things were just ingrained in him. 

“Joe...Joe don’t worry. I’m safe.” He heard her say in the other room. “I’m at Booker’s okay? I’ll hide out here and meet up with you in a few days. Alright, bye.” 

He came back out to the living room then, “There’s towels in the bathroom if you need them. And uh…” He paused to rub the back of his neck a little sheepishly, “the bedroom is through there. Bed is all yours.”

“Booker.” His name was a sigh and an admonishment on her lips and god he couldn’t help but wonder how else his name would sound when she said it. “I’m not going to kick you out of your bed.”

“No kicking necessary. I’ll take the couch. It’s not a problem.”

The look in her eye both scared and delighted him, “It’ll be a problem if I get to it first.” She declared, leaping up from the chair and making a break for the couch, but she wasn’t counting on his reflexes being fast enough that he could get to it first, or maybe she just forgot how much taller he was. Either way, she found herself crashing into his chest and landing on top of him on the couch. 

“Nope, it’s mine.” He remarked, a very brief smile crossing his lips, small enough that she would have missed it if she wasn’t close enough to see exactly what color blue his eyes were. 

“Doesn’t matter, either way I win.” She countered, adjusting herself so she could prop herself up with her forearms on his chest.

“How so?”

“Well either we stay here, which is fine by me. Or, you have to get up at some point in which case the couch is mine.”

“I see.” The laugh that made it to his eyes but didn’t quite escape his chest made her smile.

“You sound better.” She told him, losing the playful edge for a moment. She had been worried about him. Even though he answered her calls and tried to pretend that things were fine, she could tell that he had just been going through the motions.

He took a deep breath and let it out in a soft sigh that she felt with her whole body before answering. “I can’t say that I am, but I’m trying and that’s something I suppose.” He gave a small huff and pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek before rolling his eyes slightly. “Quynh can be very persuasive.” He added after a moment earning a small chuckle from Nile. 

Reluctantly, Nile got up off of him and offered him a hand to help him up, wincing when she saw the blood stain on his shirt. “Sorry.” She mumbled, gesturing towards his clothes at his look of confusion. “Occupational hazard, I guess the clothes don’t heal as fast as we do.” 

“It’s alright, I need to do laundry anyway.” He took a step forward, reaching for her shirt to check the memory of the wound on the fabric, when he stopped, pulling his hand away with a mumbled apology. “I’ll uh...I’ve got some...I’ll grab you something to wear. You’ll probably want to shower to at least get the blood off your skin before it dries too bad. And I can throw your clothes in the wash if you think they are worth saving, if not you’ll have to make do with what I have until I can run to the store tomorrow and buy you something else.” He was rambling and he could feel his face burning, but he couldn’t help it. “Bathroom is through there.” He added, after a moment, before retreating to his bedroom to find some sweats and a t-shirt for Nile. It wasn’t appropriate work attire for him, but all his time with the guard had taught him the importance of having easy unisex clothes on hand. He handed them to her with another small apology, meeting her gaze briefly before dropping his eyes to the pile in his hands .”Sorry they’ll be a bit big, I wasn’t expecting company.”

“I should apologize to you for barging in like this. I just didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Honestly it’s alright Nile. You told me to call you when I needed you, now you need me. I may be a useless piece of shit but I’m not that heartless.”

“Okay first rule, no more talking about yourself like that.” Nile snapped, tucking the clothes under one arm so she could point one finger in his face. It did briefly cross her mind how ridiculous she looked threatening him when he towered over her, but she didn’t care.

Booker let out a small huff of amusement. “Alright boss.” He replied, the corner of his lips twitching up in a half-hearted attempt at a smile before he retreated to the bedroom. Nile watched him walk away for a moment before heading towards the shower. When she came back out, she found that he had put out a couple pillows and a blanket on the couch for her and the door to the bedroom was shut. 

Nile woke the next morning to the sound of a coffee maker gurgling in the kitchen. She sat up with a yawn, stretching out her back and rubbing a hand over her eyes.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

She turned to look at Booker where he stood, leaning against the counter. He’d clearly been up longer than her and at least taken a shower if the wet hair falling into his face was any indication. “What time is it?” 

“A little after 9.”

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve slept that late since I was in high school.” Nile pushed the blankets off and stood up, stretching up and hearing the satisfying pop of her back cracking before heading to join him in the small kitchen.

“In my experience, healing wears you out and that combined with the adrenaline crash can wipe out even the early risers.” He shrugged, pouring himself a cup of coffee and heading to the fridge to put a little bit of Baileys in it. 

“Really?”

He turned to look at her, the indignant tone catching his attention. She was regarding him with a raised eyebrow and a stern expression that reminded him so much of the look Isabel would give their misbehaving boys that any coherent thought shattered. He wasn’t sure what expression was frozen on his face, but based on the way her eyes narrowed he was sure it was taken for confusion. “It’s like 9 am and you’re already drinking?” That was a grenade disguised as an accusation, lobbed at him and designed to riddle him with holes, but it was enough to disrupt the shell shock that had taken him. He didn’t start drinking heavily until after Isabel had died and the newer territory pulled him out of the cesspool of his thoughts and back to the upset young woman in front of him.

“I’m trying Nile, I really am.” The pleading note in his voice surprised them both. He hadn’t realized how much he needed her approval and understanding until right now. “But I’ve tried cutting myself off completely before, I know it doesn’t end well. Moderation though, that I can do. It’s more coffee than alcohol and it’s enough to keep the worst at bay for now.” 

“Alright.” His pleading softened her, “I suppose it’s a start.” She let the matter drop, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Nile took a long drink, savoring the way the heat threaded through her veins. “Wait, don’t you have a job? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“I cancelled my classes for the day. Didn’t want to leave you here by yourself.” He replied with a shrug. 

“Classes? What’re you teaching?”

“Art history.” He replied a little sheepishly, just barely glancing up at her to see the way her eyes lit up at that. 

“Really?” She might have been a little too excited about that but she didn’t care.

“Yeah,” He rubbed the back of his neck and could feel his cheeks flaming. “It’s interesting and I’ve got a unique perspective on it.”

“Because of the immortality thing?”

“Well yeah I suppose but not that. It’s uh...why don’t I just show you?”

Nile followed his lead and set the coffee cup down on the kitchen counter with a little trepidation as he went into the second bedroom of the small apartment. “Booker?” Her tone made him duck his head, looking every bit like an abused puppy waiting for a blow. “Why is there a Degas in your second bedroom?”

“Itsnotreal.” Was the mumbled response.

“What did you say?”

She saw his shoulders creeping up to his ears and he took a shaky breath as if trying to steady himself. “It’s not real. It’s a…” He trailed off, ashamed of the career he had made for himself all those years ago. Another sigh, pulling up whatever courage he had stored in his bones. “I made it.”

“Holy shit Book, that’s really good.” Nile crossed the room to inspect the painting, studying it, and using her somewhat limited expertise to search for flaws.

“I uhh...was a forger, for a long time.” He stayed where he was, hunched up by the wall trying not to take up space, but with every surprised look and impressed noise his shoulders dropped. “Letters, art, currency. I was never creative enough to make something of my own, but I got pretty good at copying other people. And I don’t...I don’t teach the students about forgery, it just gives me a better understanding of the source material I guess.”

“That’s pretty cool Book. Are any of your pieces in museums?”

“Yeah.” Another concerned mumbled response as if he wasn’t sure what answer would make her happy.

“We’ll have to go sometime. I want to see if I can figure out which ones are yours. We can make a game out of it.”

Her eyes were bright and she seemed genuinely excited, both about something he’d done and the prospect of doing something with him. Needless to say, it caught him off guard. But it seemed like everything she did caught him off guard. “Yeah. That would be fun.”

They spent three days together in his apartment, reading and talking and playing card games until Nile got tired of losing, especially when she was sure he was cheating and couldn’t figure out how. Booker left a couple times to get her some clothes and to get the both of them some food, but for the most part they were inseparable. Booker blamed it on the close quarters, that she was stuck in his small apartment with him and so had nothing else to do but spend time with him even if she’d rather be doing anything else. He’d tried to apologize for that once, to tell her that she could kick him out if she wanted some space from him, but he let the words die at her look...it was cleaner than him dying at her hands for breaking her first rule. She’d established a couple other rules, such as alcohol was only allowed at mealtimes and if she asked him a question he had to answer honestly, even if he thought she wouldn’t like the answer. He was just getting used to having her there, to coming out of the shower to a cup of coffee and a bagel on the table waiting for him, when Copley gave her the all clear. “Rules still apply even when I’m not here. And I’m sure I’ll see you again soon, it was nice not being the biggest fifth wheel in history for a few days,” she had told him as she was leaving, and all too soon he was alone again.


	6. Hold me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nile's mother dies and there's only one place she wants to be.

Six more years passed in the blink of an eye before he moved on. He had been 42 when he died, so he felt safe passing for anything from 35 to 45 which gave him a decade before he started to worry that people wouldn’t notice him aging. He moved to Antwerp next, getting another university job, this time teaching history. And that’s where he was eight years later when Nile, who had now officially been immortal longer than she was mortal, showed up at his door in the middle of the night again. He had barely opened the door when she crashed into his chest. Booker glanced worriedly out the door, trying to determine if she was being followed when he realized that the trembling of her limbs was sobs not adrenaline. 

“Nile?  _ Mon ange? _ What’s wrong?” He had managed to lock the door by reaching around her and if his arms settled around her waist, well he could say it was only because they were already there. Her response was muffled by his shirt and he pulled back from her so he could cup her face in his hands, running his thumbs along her cheeks and feeling her tears soak into his skin. “Nile?” He prompted again.

“I’m sorry...I didn’t know where else to go...I just...I needed…” She trailed off with a hiccupped sob. He didn’t interject, instead letting her piece together her thoughts without disruption. “Copley called. My mom she...she…” The look she gave him was more apologetic than he thought was necessary until she spoke again, “They buried her last week. Cancer.” 

Cancer. He knew all too well what that meant. They had identified more types of cancer since the disease had ravaged his youngest, but it didn’t change how devastating it could be. He could tell from her expression that she was waiting for the word to bring him to his knees, and another time it might have. But it wasn’t fair to her to have to pause her fresh grieving to manage what he still hadn’t dealt with two hundred years later. “Oh  _ mon ange _ I’m so sorry.” He murmured, pulling her back into his embrace and settling his chin on top of her head as he supported more and more of her weight with each sob.

He let her cry for a few more minutes before he spoke again. “Can I get you something to drink  _ mon ange _ ?” He felt her stiffen and he immediately spoke up again to clarify before she could say what he knew she would say. “I didn’t mean like that. I’m so far gone that I’ll never recover so I know better than to suggest treating grief with alcohol.” Instead of getting a verbal response, he felt her tap something on his spine. It took him a moment, but once he clued in he smiled. “Rule one, right sorry. Tea or water?”  _ Tea please  _ came the reply in morse code and he did his best to ignore the way each tap of her finger on his back sent lightning up and down his spine. “Got it. You know it was my idea to learn morse code.” He told her as he helped her into a chair in the kitchen, making her some tea as he distracted her with the story of being part of the group of Europeans who worked on the international morse code in 1851 and how he had taught the others because he knew it would be useful for silent communication either when talking was inadvisable or, and they both knew the truth of this, neck injuries made verbal communication impossible. By the time he finished his story, she looked more present than she had been since she crashed back into his life but he knew it wouldn’t last.

They talked for a while until he could tell that the emotional exhaustion was settling into her bones and becoming physical. “Take the bed tonight.” He told her gently, leaving her sitting and staring into her empty mug as he went and got the room and himself ready. When he came back out she hadn’t moved, so he placed the night clothes in front of her, the same ones she had worn last time. She took them woodenly, moving slowly to the bathroom to get ready for bed. He turned out the lights and settled himself onto the couch. Booker had just about fallen asleep when she came out and draped herself across his chest. “Nile.” He started before she interrupted him.

“Please.” Her voice broke a little and he knew he would do anything she asked him to do, “I don’t want to be alone.” 

“Alright  _ mon ange _ .” He murmured. She had opted to lay on her back, her braids fanning out across his chest. He brought his inside knee up and dropped his outside leg to the floor to bracket her torso between his thighs to keep her secure and give her space on the couch for her legs. When he brought his inside arm up to settle it on his leg, she shifted to pillow her head in his shoulder and it brought a small smile to his face as he wrapped his other arm around her waist only to be trapped against her body by her elbow. It certainly wasn’t the most comfortable position for him, but he didn’t care. She was a warm weight against his chest, nothing like the self-imposed anvil he was used to, and he didn’t realize how touch starved he was until everything wound up so tightly in his mind, body, and soul uncoiled slowly at the heat radiating from his chest outward. 

The following two days spent together was very reminiscent of the time they had spent together in Montreal. Booker never pushed her to do more than she was able to, but from years upon years of experience he knew when she was getting too far in her head and made it his mission to pull her back to him and present. And each night she slept on his chest on the couch, sometimes on her back, sometimes on her stomach, but always with her head right over his heart. On the third day he finally convinced her to leave the apartment with him. “Where are we going Booker?” She asked him at least four times with increasing annoyance before they arrived at their destination. “A museum?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Booker,” She sighed, “I don’t know that I’m in the mood to wander through a museum.”

“Remember last time we were together?” He asked and her brow furrowed at the unexpected topic change. She didn’t speak but instead raised one eyebrow as indication for him to continue. He leaned in close, whispering conspiratorially in her ear just in case anyone was listening, and if he brushed her hair away from her ear well that was just to make sure she could hear him. “You said you wanted to go to a museum with me to see if you could figure out which piece was one of mine. This particular museum has three of my pieces. I’ll make it easier for you by telling you if we’re in the room with one of them, but other than that you’ll have to try and figure it out yourself.”

The competitive glint in her eye was dimmed by a shroud of grief but the smile she gave him was genuine and not forced like some of the others he had seen the last couple days. They wandered through the museum together, him telling her stories of the artists he had met and pointing out paintings he thought would interest her, particularly the one that he immediately recognized as one of Joe’s. Which led him to telling her the story of one of the biggest fights he’d had with Joe, when they went to a museum in Cairo and Joe had noticed Booker eying one of his pieces. “He’d asked me my interest and I didn’t notice at the time that he was getting ready to tell me that the piece was his when I told him it was one of my forgeries.” Booker laughed somewhat self consciously, “I think if we weren’t in public he would have hit me right there. I think he didn’t know if he should be disgusted that it wasn’t real or impressed that even he didn’t recognize it wasn’t one of his own.”

“Is this one actually Joe’s or one of yours?” She asked.

“It’s Joe’s.”

“How can you tell?”

“I have a good memory for art so I know which one’s I have stashed around the world. But more than that, I always leave a small mark. It’s not noticeable unless you are looking for it which is how nobody has noticed, but an artist signs their work somehow right?” He explained.

“What kind of mark do you leave?” She asked innocently, still studying Joe’s painting but glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Telling you that would be cheating  _ mon ange _ .” He chuckled. “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”

They spent several hours wandering through the museum, with Booker subtly giving her hints as to which paintings were hers when she got stuck, but not so much that she felt like she won unfairly. After they finished they picked up some croquettes and headed back towards his apartment. She finished out the week with him, expressing some concern that he had cancelled more classes for her but since she didn’t want to be alone she didn’t really mind. Finally the time came for her to leave him again, no matter how much she might have wanted to stay. “Thank you Book, for everything.” She murmured, standing up on her tiptoes to brush her lips across his cheek before walking out the door.


	7. Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I won't see you again"   
> "Have a little faith book"

He settled into a pattern then, moving every decade to teach a new subject at a new college in a different country. Nile became a constant yet distant presence in his life. She’d call him every three months and would text him more frequently than that. If she ever happened to be nearby they met up and every time he talked to her the imprint of her lips on his face burned. If he was being honest with himself, and he tried to be since that was Rule 3 after all, he couldn’t help but think that Quynh was right when she called him out on being in love with Nile. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to love Isabel, that feeling had been washed away by the alcohol long ago, but for the first time in a long time he felt warm. Sebastien le Livre had died in the harsh Russian winter and Booker had woken up to a noose and a crow, filled to the brim with the ice and snow around him to numb the pain. And he thought, maybe, that Sebastien wasn’t completely gone, that perhaps the warm waters of the Nile could rescue him from his icy prison. That’s when things changed.

It had been 30 years since the death of Nile’s mother, 57 since his banishment and over halfway through his sentence when Nile called him unexpectedly. “What’s wrong  _ mon ange _ ?” He asked when he answered the phone.

“How did you know something was wrong?”

“You’re calling too early.” 

She let that explanation stand because he was right, “Can you come to Andy’s safe house in Kazakhstan?” She asked.

“Do I want to know why?” She sighed but didn’t answer his question, which told him plenty. “Give me a couple days and I’ll be there.”

“See you soon.” She hung up on him then and he set about packing and notifying his boss and his students that a family emergency had come up and he would be gone for the rest of the week before booking himself the first flight to Kazakhstan.

He knew this had something to do with Andy. Why wouldn’t it? She was mortal again, Nile was concerned, and asked him to come to an area of the world that he knew Andy would always consider to be home. Well that added up to an answer he didn’t want. But there was no running from this, this was something he had to face.

When he arrived, Nile answered the door. He could tell she’d been on the verge of tears and when he opened his arms she darted in for a quick hug before letting go and ushering him in. Booker took a deep breath to calm his nerves, before heading into the main room of the safehouse. He wasn’t surprised to see Quynh nestled into Andy’s side on the bed. “Hey boss.” He was very impressed that his voice didn’t break, even though his heart did. 

“How bad is it?” Andy asked him in an echo of the conversation they’d had in the Charlie safe house. 

He looked at her then, really looked at her. At her silver hair, the lines of a life well lived etched into her face and hands, but mostly at her smile. She seemed more content than she had ever been in all the time he’d known her. He didn’t know if that was due to the loss of immortality or gaining back the woman at her side. He offered her a genuine half-smile before repeating to her what she’d said to him, “It’s an improvement.” Andy laughed at that, the amusement devolving into a coughing fit that stole the air from his lungs. If only he could have given it to her instead of losing it to the atmosphere. Quynh sat there gently soothing Andy through the coughing fit and gently forcing her to drink some water when it subsided. He glanced over at where Nile sat in the corner with the light of a candle caressing her face. The conversation recall with Andy and the firelight on Nile pulled another memory to the forefront of his mind.  _ Everyone around you, everyone you love, is gonna grow old, is gonna suffer, and is gonna die _ . He could tell from Nile’s expression that the thought crossed her mind too, except neither of them had thought he meant Andy. 

Andy waved Quynh off with fond irritation before turning back to him. “ _ Sebastien, come over here. _ ” She ordered in Occitan. He never knew if he should be grateful or not that she knew his first language, that he didn’t get to lose it the way he lost the rest of himself because she wouldn’t let him. He was sure that this time she chose it to have a mostly private conversation. Quynh had gone under before she had the chance to learn, and there had been no reason to teach Nile. 

He walked up and sat down in the chair at the side of the bed, taking her now frail hand in both of his. “ _ You were right. _ ” He told her.

“ _ Usually, but what about this time? _ ”

“ _ I said I’d never see you again, you told me to have faith. _ ”

“ _ You could have seen me sooner, if you had only asked. _ ”

“ _ Hundred years isn’t up boss, I probably shouldn’t even be here now. _ ”

“ _ Oh for fuck’s sake Sebastien. You’re the only one who hasn’t forgiven yourself. Nile was never mad at you, I forgave you even before you brought Quynh back to me. _ ”

“ _ Joe and Nicky would have killed me on sight. _ ”

“ _ Do you have any idea how miserable Joe has been without you? The only reason you aren’t home yet is because you aren’t ready to be. _ ”

“ _ I’m still not boss. I’m trying, but I fucked up and I need to answer for that. _ ”

“ _ Yeah you do. I think you have already but if you haven’t that’s okay. _ ”

He gave her a small sad smile before going to stand up and leave. “ _ Sebastien, wait. _ ” He did, staying standing with her hand still in his. “ _ I don’t blame you for shooting me, I understand why you did. You didn’t cause me to lose my immortality, it had nothing to do with you and you don’t need to carry this weight the way you carry the rest. And one more thing, you are deserving of good things Sebastien, don’t make her wait forever, she doesn’t deserve that. _ ”

“ _ Goodbye Andy. _ ” He murmured, bending over to brush a kiss across her forehead before walking out the door. 


	8. It's a long road back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's just call this, Booker does not handle Andy's death well

It took another four years before Andy finally passed. After a year Booker stopped answering Nile’s phone calls. Ten years and he went off even Copley’s radar. Another eight passed with no contact before Nile finally gave in and asked for help. “Do you have any idea where he would be?” She asked Joe and Nicky over breakfast. 

“Nile he’s fine. He’s immortal, he doesn’t need you looking after him.” Joe sighed.

“Joe please. I’m really worried. I haven’t heard from him in almost twenty years.”

“And this is unusual Nile?” Nicky asked.

“He’s never not answered my phone calls before. Even Copley doesn’t know where he is. I know you were mad at him, I know he hurt you, I get that, but he is not well. I don’t think he’s ever been diagnosed but he obviously has some pretty severe depression and he’s alone and that doesn’t help things and he was doing better but then Andy.” She was rambling she knew but she didn’t know how they didn’t see it. They had known Booker way longer than she had but either they’d missed it or ignored it and she didn’t know which was worse. “Just because we’re immortal doesn’t mean we don’t suffer.”

“And why are you just now asking us Nile?” Joe asked, clarifying when he noticed her expression, “I mean no judgement. I’m just trying to understand.”

“I messed up okay. When he stopped answering my calls I thought maybe he just needed some space to grieve. The Andy he knew was not the Andy I knew so I wouldn’t have blamed him for not wanting to share his grief with someone who didn’t understand. And we’ve been busy and you guys were right when you told me that time starts to move differently. By the time I got concerned he’d fallen off Copley’s radar. Maybe James could have found him but Moose doesn’t know him as well and doesn’t know where he would have hunkered down.” Moose wasn’t a Copley by blood, but when James had chosen Moose to be his successor, Moose had taken the alias out of respect. Nile had joked then about them having their own Bosley but none of the others had gotten it. “I’ve spent the time since looking for him but I’m out of ideas. Please, do you have any idea where he might be? He’s family, and the last thing any of us need is someone out of contact because who knows what could happen.”

Joe and Nicky shared a long look, sharing the kind of silent conversation that was only possible when you’ve known someone that well for that long. Finally Nicky nodded and grabbed a piece of paper to write out some coordinates. “When we had to go find him last time, after he didn’t return from burying Jean-Pierre, this is where he was.”

“Thank you Nicky.” Nile stood up, taking the paper from him.

“Nile wait.” Joe grabbed her hand to still her before she could head out the door. “Just...be prepared okay. You’re right, we should have thought about what the banishment would do to him. I know you didn’t say it, but I could tell you were thinking it. You just have to remember that mental health is a very new concept for us and lobotomies were a treatment for depression for a lot longer than any drug that would be prescribed now. So just, keep that in mind before you think too poorly of us.”

Nile’s bit her tongue to fight the instinct to make a quip back at him and instead circled around the table to place a kiss on both of their cheeks. She had her phone out and was calling Copley before she was out the door to arrange for transportation to the coordinates Nicky had given her. 

The coordinates took her to a house on the island of Martinique. She had read up on the history of the island on her flight and was very thankful that she had learned French since it was the primary language there. The house had seen better days and it looked like it had been abandoned for decades. “Booker?” She called out as she knocked on the door. When no answer came she gave in and picked the lock and immediately had to step back out the door gagging for fresh air. “Booker?” She called again, louder this time with just a tinge of fear. The house smelled like some of the back alleys in Chicago, like stale beer and bodily fluids, and she covered her nose with the hem of her shirt before taking her last deep breath of clean air and walking in. 

Empty liquor bottles littered the floor, interspersed with half eaten food that sported mold as colorful as a Degas ballet painting and was home to some cockroaches that Nile was sure were big enough to ride. “Booker?” Her voice echoed off the dead weight of the house and she tried not to flinch when it sent some things skittering back into hiding. Clearing the rooms felt more stressful than anytime she’d done it while in Afghanistan and with each empty doorway her anxiety grew.

When she found him, she almost didn’t recognize him. His beard was patchy as if he’d tried to shave at one point but gave up and his cheeks were so hollowed out that it cast strange shadows on his uneven facial hair. “Shit, Book.” She dropped to her knees by his head and pushed his greasy matted hair away from his face. He wasn’t breathing and when she dropped her hand to his throat she couldn’t feel a pulse. “Hey. Come on. Open your eyes please Book.” Nile didn’t know how long she sat there running her thumbs across his cheeks murmuring faint pleas and waiting for him to wake up. She had pulled his head into her lap when he didn’t immediately wake to her touch and so she felt it almost immediately when he started to stir. “Hey, that’s it Book, come back.”

Booker came back with a pained gasp and a sharp set of coughs that made him feel like his lungs were rattling around in his chest. His body felt hollow and his bones too heavy, but it was the warmth radiating from his cheeks that hurt the most. “ _ Let me go. Please let me go. _ ” He begged. The movement he could faintly feel across his jaw stilled but the warmth didn’t abate.

“ _ I can’t do that. It’s time to open your eyes now _ .” The movement was attached to a sound. He recognized the voice and the language separately, but not together. 

“ _ Please. _ ” He could feel the tears collecting in the hollow of his cheeks before the movement took even that away from him. “ _ If I open my eyes that makes it real. I can’t...I can’t do it anymore. It hurts, it all hurts so much. How can I be in this much pain and still exist?. _ ”

“ _ Because it’s not your time yet. _ ”

“ _ But why not Isabel? _ ” That name didn’t sound right against the voice that was speaking to him, but who else would feel like the warmth of a heaven he didn’t deserve? No one was coming for him, this was likely all a hallucination anyway. “ _ I would have given my life for you and the boys a hundred times over. Why am I condemned to be here alone? _ ”

“ _ You aren’t alone. You have people that care about you. _ ”

“ _ Not anymore. I drove them off, I made them hate me, just like I made our family hate me. How come Phillippe bled out in your arms begging to live and when I beg you to let me die too you won’t? _ ” He reached up and trapped the movement against his right cheek which solidified into a hand calloused from hard work. His own hand was shaking as he pulled the disembodied hand down to his throat. “ _ Either tighten the noose or remove it. I can’t go on like this any longer _ .” The hand didn’t move, the pressure staying consistent, grounding him to reality as he was pulled under again. To death or sleep it didn’t matter, the two were indistinguishable. An all too brief respite that never held him the way he wanted it to. 

Nile kept her hand where he put it, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath as he passed out until she was sure he was just asleep and not dead again. She took a shaky breath, reaching up to wipe the tears from her eyes with the back of her hands. She had suspected he would be bad, especially given Joe’s warning, but this was worse than anything she could have imagined. “Just stay asleep for a little bit Book okay?” She murmured, placing her hand gently on his chest to feel his heart beat under her fingers and fighting back tears again when her finger tried to slip between his ribs. “I’m gonna take care of you and I’ll be right here when you wake up again.” She promised.

She waited a moment to see if he would stir before getting up and heading back out to the main room of the house. She stared at the mess with her hands on her hips, trying to decide what she could tackle. With a small sigh she headed into the kitchen. Given the state of the floor she knew anything in the cupboards would have to be thrown out, but she tried the sink and the light switches to no avail. Pulling out her phone she called Copley. “Hey, I found him. It’s not good. Can you look into getting water and electricity back here? I don’t know if he just wasn’t paying the bills or if there’s something here I need to turn on that I’m not seeing. And can you place an order for some supplies? Food, cleaning supplies, trash bags, and clothes and towels for two. Yeah basically everything. I would go venture out but I don’t feel comfortable leaving him alone right now. Thanks Copley.”

Nile hung up then, looking around the room with a grimace. She wasn’t sure how much she was able or willing to tackle before the cleaning supplies came in, and burning the whole house down and starting over wasn’t an option. “Fresh air it is.” She announced, more to herself than anything, and set about opening up all the windows in the house. As she was going, she got a text from Copley saying that everything had been taken care of and that her supplies would be delivered within a couple hours. The last window she opened was the one in the room she had found Booker in. “Why didn’t you just ask for help?” She sighed. There wasn’t anything else she could do until the supplies arrived so she sat down on the floor next to him again. She didn’t want to guess how dirty her jeans would be after sitting on the disgusting floor but she could just burn them and wear the ones Copley ordered. Since there wasn’t much else for her to do except wait she texted Joe an update, telling him not to expect her back for a while, that she was needed here.

Booker woke up again, from sleep this time he thought, there wasn’t the pain of a restarting heart and oxygen starved lungs, just the gaping well of hunger that had become his constant companion. He groaned, and that small sound startled something near him. It sounded too big to be a rat, at least he hoped there weren’t any rats that big, but he didn’t have a clue what it was.

“Hey Book.”

Now that voice was one he was not expecting to hear. “Nile?” He couldn’t stop himself from saying her name. She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have come to find him, shouldn’t care, shouldn’t shouldn’t shouldn’t…

“Yeah Book I’m right here.” Her voice drowned out the screaming in his head and the hand she placed over his heart seemed to anchor his mind back into his body, her warmth flowing through his veins until he felt in control of his limbs in a way he hadn’t been for longer than he’d care to admit.

“Why?” He breathed the word out with all the strength he had in his body, finally prying open his eyes to search her face for the answer.

“I was worried about you.” She gently placed her left hand on his cheek and he leaned into her touch. Everything in his mind snarled that he didn’t deserve her affection but he couldn’t help it. 

“Why?” The question was out before he could take it back and he flinched away from her, expecting chastisement or worse for breaking rule one. 

She took so long to answer that he chanced a glance back up at her. “Sebastien,” She sighed and for some reason his given name on her tongue didn’t hurt the way he thought it would. “If you are asking me that honestly you aren’t ready for the answer.” He didn’t know how to respond to that, but the growling of his neglected stomach filled the heavy silence between them. “I had Copley order some supplies and get the water and power back on. The supplies should be here soon, and then you are going to eat and start getting cleaned up. Can you stand up? I saw a chair back in the main room and I’d like to get you in it and off the floor.”

“I don’t know.” He put his palms flat on the floor and pushed himself up to a seated position with a lot more effort than the motion should have taken. By the time he made it he was shaking and out of breath and it was only her hand on his back that kept him from slumping back over. 

“Hold on, don’t move.” She instructed, darting out into the main room to grab the chair she had seen. She placed it down next to him and bent down to help him up into it. When he was stable he leaned back into the chair gratefully, his face red and shiny from exertion. She was about to say something when her phone vibrated with a text from Copley. “Supplies are here. We’re gonna get you some actual food okay?”

Nile left the room, presumably to go deal with whatever Copley had ordered for her, but Booker hardly noticed. Instead his focus was on his body, which he could feel shutting down again from being asked to do more than it had done in...well he assumed years but he had lost track of time. He let his head fall back as he counted the heartbeats he could feel pounding in his ears, the spacing getting farther and farther apart until the darkness swept its crows wings over him again. 

When Nile returned to the small bedroom she had left him in, everything was dead silent. She set down the bottle of water and the box of protein bars she’d brought in and was getting ready to check his pulse when he gasped back to life. “Hey, you back with me?” She asked, crouching down in front of him.

Once again he came back to a sound, a voice. This time he chanced a look to see a hallucination of Nile crouched in front of him, a small hesitant smile on her face. When the figment of his imagination reached out her hand to him he flinched back. “ _ Please don’t. _ ” He pleaded. “ _ I know you aren’t real. Nile wouldn’t be here. _ ”

“ _ This is real Book. I’m here. _ ” His vision, and what a vision she was, told him.

“ _ No you’re not. Nile can’t come. If she comes here she’ll know I broke the rules and she’ll be so disappointed in me. So she can’t come because I can’t handle that. Please don’t tell her I broke the rules. I can’t...I can’t… _ ” He trailed off, sagging forward on the chair. 

Nile sighed, reaching forward to brush his hair away from his face. “I’m not disappointed in you Book, I’m disappointed in myself for not coming for you sooner.” Her gentle touch brought him back to himself and he managed to sit up again. “There we go.” She murmured, “I have some water and protein bars. You’re gonna have some, but don’t make yourself sick okay?”

It might have been worded as a question but he knew he didn’t really have a choice. Obediently he took a few sips of the water and a few bites of the protein bar she offered him. Once she was satisfied that he was eating and wasn’t going to keel over again, she headed out to the main room to start cleaning up. 

Nile checked on him periodically while she cleaned up the house, tossing what she couldn’t save and setting aside what she could with a lot of elbow grease. While going through the house she found the bed he had most likely been sleeping in in one of the other bedrooms and threw the sheets in the wash. When she’d gotten the worst of the trash taken out, the bed put back together, and both of them fed with some canned soup, she turned to the next task. And getting Booker cleaned up would likely be as difficult as getting the house cleaned up. He hadn’t moved much from the chair she had left him in, he just didn’t have the will or the energy to go anywhere. “Come on Book.” She ordered, reaching out a hand to help him up.

“Where are we going?” He asked, trying to decide if the offered hand was a trap or not. With a sigh he accepted, and let her pull him to his feet. He was decidedly steadier than he had been a few hours prior, but muscle atrophy was the least of his healing body’s concerns.

“To the bathroom. I don’t even want to know how long it’s been since you’ve showered so it’s time to get you cleaned up.” He considered protesting, but thought better of it and instead let her help him sit on the edge of the tub as she assessed him. “You need a shave, but that’s not crucial.” She tsked before reaching out to mess with his hair. He caught a glimpse of himself over her shoulder and he couldn’t stop his shoulders from creeping up in shame. “Sorry Book, but we’re gonna have to shave this off. Neither of us want to sit here and deal with this for hours and it’ll grow back soon enough.” She declared.

His shoulders were by his ears and his head tucked down. He didn’t want to see himself like this, he wasn’t sure how she could stand to even look at him. “Okay boss.” He mumbled.

She frowned at that, and he even though he didn’t think it was possible he hunched over even more. The unconscious motion of his shoulders stilled when she placed both hands on his cheeks and he realized he was close to squishing her hands against his face with his shoulders. “None of that right now, okay?” His brow furrowed in confusion and she clarified, “Calling me boss I mean. I’m here as your friend, because I care about you and you need my help. When you call me boss it feels like you think I’m here because I have to be and I need you to know that I’m not. I want to be here with you, I want to help you okay?”

She was inches away and holding his face still so he couldn’t escape the gentle scrutiny of her gaze but he couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds before dropping his eyes for some respite. She stayed there after she finished speaking long enough that he realized she must have wanted some sort of acknowledgement from him. He bit back the ‘yes boss’ that wanted to escape and instead replied “Okay Nile.” She held him there a moment longer before giving a little nod and releasing him. 

“Copley is a mind reader and he sent an electric razor so we’re gonna start with that okay? If we’re just going to have to cut it off it makes no sense to wash it first.” She explained as she grabbed the razor out of the bag she had brought into the bathroom.

She started messing around with the settings and looking at his hair to figure out the length and every time she moved and he got a glimpse of himself in the mirror he wanted to vomit. She gave a little nod of satistication when she was ready that looked like the glow of a firefly against the darkness smothering him. When she knelt down next to him to start he met his own gaze in the mirror and had to tamp down the urge to run. “Wait.” His own voice startled him more than her and he closed his eyes to figure out what he needed without the distracting visual inputs assaulting him. “Can...can we do this so I can’t see the mirror?” He asked, dropping his head and only barely resisting the impulse to hide his face in his hands. 

“Yeah of course.” She agreed, placing a hand comfortingly on his knee. “We probably shouldn’t do that over the tub anyway to keep the drain from clogging. Would it work if you sat on the floor with your back to the mirror?” He nodded woodenly and she helped him down onto the floor, draping a towel around his shoulders. She kept up a constant dialogue while the clippers were running and clumps of hair drifted around them on the floor. It felt like an eternity and yet only half a second later when the buzzing of the razor stopped. “Alright Book, do you want to see or do you want me to cover up the mirror?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay, then I’ll just hang this towel up over the mirror for now.” She replied, taking the towel from across his shoulders and shaking it out onto the floor before using it to cover up the mirror. “Shower time.” She declared then as she turned on the faucet and let the water start to heat up. He didn’t know how long the water had been out, but it was a good bet that the hot water heater was as still and underused as his muscles. “Do you need help?” She asked, kneeling in front of him but making no movement to reach for him.

“No I got it, you can go.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Nile…”

“Book I’ve literally seen your intestines.” He winced at that, the phantom memory of that death rising up in his torso with a wave of shame over what he’d done. “You can have your modesty back when I’m sure you can take a shower without falling over.” 

There was nothing he could say to argue with her, especially when she was right. He let her help him undress and step into the shower with a warning to not overtax himself and that she’d be right here if he needed help. He managed the shower without needing to be rescued, but was grateful she was there to help him when he got out or else he might have collapsed again. She helped him dry off and get dressed and he couldn’t even find the energy to be embarrassed.

NIle got him into the bed and settled before heading back to the bathroom to sweep up the mess and take her own shower. She didn’t bother with her braids, they would be good for a few more days, but she’d spent enough time cleaning the house that she felt disgusting. By the time she got back to the bedroom, he was asleep. Staring at the bed she felt a blush creeping up her cheeks. She didn’t know why she was having trouble crossing that empty space in the room and crawling into bed with him, she’d spent a week sleeping on top of him on a couch and there was nowhere else to sleep. But the anticipation curling in her was there all the same. Maybe because it was a bed and that made things inherently more intimate even if there was more space and so they didn’t have to touch. Maybe because she’d literally just seen him naked. But it was probably because she was here to help him and not because she needed help. When she needed his comfort it was easy to bury herself in him with no second thoughts. This time though he needed her, which made it even more difficult given how skittish he was, flinching away from even the smallest of touches. It broke her heart every time but she always had to hide it because it would hurt him even more.

She didn’t know how long she stood there at war with himself when his breathing changed. At first she thought that maybe he had overdone it and was dying again, but then she heard him whimper and any hesitation vanished as she crossed the room to wake him up. “Sebastien. Wake up sweetheart.” She murmured as she knelt by the side of the bed, reaching out to gently stroke his cheek. 

Booker startled awake with the strangled half sob of a barely remembered dream. He looked around frantically before his gaze fell on Nile. Another choked off whimper escaped him as he closed his eyes and tried to slow his breath by timing it to the caress of her thumb across his face. 

“It was just a bad dream, whatever it was it’s over now. You’re alright, you’re safe here with me.” She murmured, whispering small comforts until his ragged breathing slowed and he moved to gently grasp her wrist. His fingertips felt so rough against her skin and he pressed a brief kiss to her palm in apology. 

“ _ Merci mon ange. _ ” He breathed into her skin. She moved to stand up then and he squeezed her hand before she could walk away. “Please don’t leave.” After everything she had dealt with from him that day he couldn’t bring himself to be ashamed of the pleading tone. 

“I’m not leaving Sebastien. I was just going to go around to the other side of the bed.” She explained gently.

Without a word he scooted across the bed to make room for her on that side, never letting go of her hand. The thought of losing that connection was worse than anything the ghosts in his head could conjure up and a large part of him wanted to hold her and never let go.

She followed him with an indulgent shake of her head and a soft snort of amusement, letting him gently pull her into the bed. He rolled over then, trapping her hand against his heart, and she settled herself behind him, pressing her forehead gently in between his shoulder blades. 

The days ran into weeks. During daylight hours they fixed up the house and talked about anything and everything. He asked where she learned her French and complained about Joe and Nicky’s pronunciation for two days afterwards. And when she asked him why he came to a place as remote as Martinique, he was surprised at how his heart didn’t hurt when he explained, but that could have been due to her hand in his. He explained that Martinique was a French territory and had been for most of his life. Isabel had often talked of moving there when she got tired of the weather or the people in Paris so he’d built the house in honor of her and their family. At night they settled into the bed, the master bedroom she’d found out. The room she’d found him in originally was intended to be Jean-Pierre’s. Each night was different, sometimes she held him, sometimes he held her. She would nestle into his side or sometimes he’d lay his head on her chest and fall asleep to her hands in his growing hair. 

Weeks turned to a month, then a month and a half into two when she couldn’t put it off anymore. Copley had a couple jobs in the works and the team needed her. “Go on. I’ll be alright.” Booker told her when he caught her chewing her lip and staring at her phone for the fourth time in an hour. 

“Are you sure? Because I can stay, I don’t mind.”

“Nile,  _ mon ange _ , you’ve done more than enough for me.” He told her, placing a kiss to her knuckles. His strength was back and he’d gained back most of the weight he’d lost by not eating for possibly years. “It’s time for you to go save someone else. Besides, I’ll see you in a few years.”

She reached out to brush her thumb across his cheek, a motion that had become so ingrained in them that he automatically leaned into her hand even before she fully crossed the space between them. “Okay. But you need to answer my calls this time. That’s Rule four now. No more ignoring my calls with no explanation.”

“Yes boss.” He remarked and she leaned forward to press her forehead to his briefly. She pulled back slightly, just enough that he could clearly see her face but still sharing her breath and waited. He felt his cheeks burning and he pulled back so quickly that he very nearly fell over. She chuckled softly under her breath but he couldn’t figure out what the thoughtful expression on her face possibly meant. He couldn’t figure out why she seemed so settled and like she had just solved an unanswerable question while he felt like someone had just thrown him in the ocean when he didn’t know how to swim. He gave his head a sharp shake to knock things back into place and busied himself making one last dinner for the two of them while Nile talked to Copley to arrange transportation. And that night when she curled up against him she held him tighter than usual, like she wasn’t ready to let go and be separated, but she left the next morning all the same. 


	9. Let's go home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end

The last few years of his banishment passed like the first few, always moving, never settled. Except this time he was done running. Instead he was running small jobs for Copley, things that didn’t need the attention of the whole team or that needed his unique talents while counting down the days until the end. And then, it happened, he found himself back on that same beach outside that same pub where he had said goodbye, skipping stones while he waited.

This time it was Nile who came down to him. When she didn’t say anything he turned to look at her and she met his gaze with a small smile. “You ready?"

“Yes boss.” The answer came easy, the corner of his lips curling up in a half smirk and when she reached out to touch his cheek he couldn’t stop a contented sigh from slipping out. She pulled him in again for a brief forehead touch in greeting, and when she paused again just inches from him he closed the distance between them before he could think better of it and gently pressed his lips to hers. She practically melted against him, opening up to him and swiping her tongue across his lips. The groan that rumbled through his chest parted his lips even more and she claimed the inside of his mouth as thoroughly as she had claimed his heart. He finally pulled back to catch his breath and he couldn’t stop himself from staring at her kiss reddened lips. “I should have done that a long time ago.”

“Yeah you should have.” She teased, running her fingers through his hair. “Do it again.”

“Yes boss.” He obeyed eagerly, kissing her again for a long moment as he learned the contours of her mouth with his tongue. Reluctantly he pulled away again, but he couldn’t stop himself from brushing another butterfly quick kiss across her lips before stepping back to grab her hand and turn towards the pub where the others were waiting. 

“Let’s go home.” She gave him a small encouraging smile, squeezing his hand once in reassurance before they headed into the pub to welcome him back.


End file.
